GAYLETTER

You the Boxer, is Michael Wynne’s second photographic book in his one-year challenge to produce a new photographic book each month from October 2016 to September 2017. The small 4”x3” hand stitched book explores Wynne’s experience boxing through text and 15 beautiful, intimate photographs.

There’s an image of a sexy Latin boxer, his uncut dick and grown out bush showing off the intimate beauty of the male form. The whole book is an exploration of the raw masculinity and eroticism of contact sports. Wynne’s poetic like text accompanies the photographs, here a favorite example: “The first time I saw you, you were sparring with one of the other coaches. Nimble was the word that came to mind, like one second you were on this side of the floor, the next you’re five meters away on the other side of the mat. You weave in and out of the shadows. You’re here and then not here, somewhere else.”

The palm-sized book allows the reader to have an intimate experience exploring Wynne’s raw and graceful world of athletic male photography. The beauty of the body, and the homoerotic communication between athletes, comes alive in this pocket sized publication.

Produced in an edition of 100, You the Boxer, can be purchased here.

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Just last night I was watching the lovely Rachel Maddow relay some horrid facts about Mike Pence to her viewers. She grew quite verklempt as she detailed how in 1997, Pence made it possible for same-sex couples to be fined $10,000 and and given 18 months in prison just for applying for a marriage license. To make matters worse and to pile more grossness on top of his crusade against marriage equality, Pence also felt that the money being funded into HIV and AIDS programs should be redirected into government-funded gay-conversion therapy programs.

Yes. You read that correctly. Pence wanted the money being used to help those in actual need to be redirected into a program that would forever be obsolete, because need we remind you, Mike Pence, gay people can’t be “fixed.”

The Liberal Internet is a broken record at this point, but I’ll join in because it’s important to stay mad: the time to come together is now! We must fight to be heard — loud and clear. There are so many ways to get involved. They’re not directly affiliated with any political protest groups but Memory Palace “is a vigil and community gathering at St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery open for all to remember the loved ones they’ve lost to AIDS.” A Republican agenda did a fine job of forgetting about all of our loved ones dying of AIDS when it was happening on every street corner. November 15th’s event at Memory Palace pays homage to those who were lost during the height of the epidemic; “a spirit of lively remembrance,” they call it. …

Now that Beyonce has managed to defy all odds and tricked gay people into being interested in country music, it’s important that we know our cultural history within the genre. Unfortunately due to the conservative politics of country music’s mainstream markets, country singers have only started coming out of the closet as recently as 2010. As slow as the progress might seem, none of it would be possible without Patrick Haggerty, aka Lavender Country, who blazed the trail back in the 1970s. Haggerty recorded Lavender Country’s self-titled album in 1973, thereby becoming the first openly gay country star.

Lavender Country sold all one thousand copies of the record that were issued, but then more or less vanished from popular culture. Patrick, a whip-smart Marxist, ran a couple of relatively successful political campaigns, but could never get a career off the ground. He eventually returned to country music and began to make a living off of singing “old songs to old people,” namely performing country classics in retirement homes.

Thanks to Youtube, one of Lavender Country’s most powerful and lyrically compelling songs, “Cryin’ These Cocksucking Tears,” has since garnered a resurgence of attention to the band. The record label Paradise of Bachelors reissued the album in 2014 which in turn led to more press coverage, a tour, and now a short documentary about Patrick’s life. “These Cocksucking Tears” was part of a short film festival featured at Nitehawk in New York City. …

During the most depressing of times, we can always turn to art for inspiration. It’s imperative to remind ourselves of the light in other people, and the beauty of seeing human beings for who they really are. Barak and Tomer Heymann’s documentary Who’s Gonna Love Me Now? does just that. The film follows Saar, a 39-year-old Israeli living with HIV in London, who is beginning to reconcile his sexual identity with his national one. Saar grew up on a religious kibbutz, which is a communal farm, back in Israel, and after avoiding them for years, tries to make amends with his family.

When we first meet Saar, he has already lived in London for over a decade and has worked hard to build a community for himself. His life mainly surrounds the Gay Men’s Chorus he participates in. The chorus helped him initially adjust to this foreign country and has since become a second family, caring for him without judgement. Throughout the movie it becomes clear just how central the chorus is to all of the members’ lives and scenes of them performing together punctuate the film, often providing much needed comic relief.

Saar explains that after going through a bad breakup, he stopped taking care of himself and consciously started making dangerous decisions. He knew how irresponsible he was being and would later admit that his HIV diagnosis felt like karma for the acts he committed both to others and himself. Although part of him feels like he’s being appropriately punished, he manages to handle his positive status with a lightheartedness and dark sense of humor. …

I fell for Tinashe when I saw the Boss music video. I mean, this girl was eighteen, wrote a vicious song, taught herself to produce her own music, then self-directed its video. The vision and its execution left an impression. In one red-light setting, with a bright curly lion’s mane of hair, she sidles against an oversized county fair teddy bear, croons up over its head, then playfully decapitates it. And rips out its stuffing. It’s wild. Since then, she’s stayed focused, continually maturing her style.

Tinashe is twenty-three now and no longer needs the heels or hair or glam to prove that she’s grown. Nightride, released last Friday at midnight, is not child’s play. She came for every wig on this bi-coastal mess we call America. Released with a music video statement of purpose, Nightride is the accompaniment and precursor to Joyride, her upcoming sophomore album.

Her position relative to popular music in late 2016 is somewhere between Frank Ocean and Ariana Grande. Like Frank, Tinashe’s been roiling in music industry purgatory, her sophomore album suffering massive delays, her label increasingly hapless at managing her career. Both Nightride and Blonde are dark and pained, isolated (Nightride has zero features), but animated by the singer’s devotional faith in love and self-ownership. Both albums suit these suddenly darker days especially well. Like Ariana’s interstellar pop, Tinashe’s vocals pair dense production with an agile and winking sensibility. But Tinashe’s a more genuinely dangerous woman who belts out a bit more sparingly. …